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December - 2017

Per the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), recreationalÂ drones had to be registered, then they didnât, and now they do again. The PresidentÂ recently signed the National Defense Authorization Act for 2018 thatÂ requires recreational drones to be registered for civilian and hobbyist use. InÂ a kind of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) hokie pokie, the FAAâs original registration requirement that was struck down
earlier this year has been restored. All drones between Â½ pound and 55 poundsÂ must again be registered with the FAA. Owners again need to provide their name,Â physical address, and email address for the FAA drone database. The noncommercialÂ drone registration fee is fiveÂ dollars. The drone owner receives a registrationÂ number that must be displayed on the drone during flight. The best site forÂ knowing the rules for hobbyists is the FAAâs knowbeforeyoufly.org

[caption id="attachment_274" align="alignleft" width="300"] The Intel(R) Falcon(TM) 8+ System is an professional drone with cockpit controller. (Image: Intel.com)[/caption]

Sure, the technology that has enabled drones saves a lot of money for applicationsÂ like inspections on oil rigs, construction sites, and inÂ agriculture. The commercialÂ drone applications that used to require helicopters with trained pilots can beÂ undertaken by drone pilots on the ground. But registering an 8-ounce UAS? InÂ spite of the seeming silliness of having to register an 8-ounce drone, this actuallyÂ might be a good thing because of the large number of drones in civilian handsÂ that end up interfering withÂ firefighting planes, delayingÂ flights at an airport, and causing collisions for Army helicopters. According to the National Transportation Safety BoardÂ (NTSB), a civilian-operated DJI Phantom Four drone collided with a U.S. Army helicopterÂ at 300 feet because the operator was flying the drone out of sight and did notÂ know the air regulations. The operator didnât even know that the drone collidedÂ with a helicopter until the NTSB informed him. According to the NTSB press release, the helicopter landedÂ safely, but âa 1 1/2 â inch dent was found on the leading edge of one of theÂ helicopterâs four main rotor blades and parts of the drone were found lodged inÂ the helicopterâs engine oil cooler fan.â The FAAÂ wants drone operators to know the regulations and safe operating procedures,Â even if they only intend to fly their 8-ounce drone in their backyard.

Unmanned aircraft, even the small ones, are a serious problem when theyâre flown by people who have no regard for their surroundings.
In Canada, aÂ commercial flight got hit by a drone on October 12, 2017. Violating the airÂ regulations in Canada can cost an irresponsible drone flight operator up toÂ $25,000 in fines. This also makes sense,Â considering theÂ idiocy of some drone operators, which include guns mounted on drones and drones mounted with flamethrowersÂ used to cook turkeys. Technology has enabled drones with a largeÂ number of sensors, low-cost CPUs and powerÂ efficient electronics, batteries, and motors such that the cost of a drone isÂ quite affordable. This is another case of
technology growing faster than laws and regulations. Drones can cause moreÂ damage than bird strikes. ChesleyÂ "Sully" Sullenberger landed a plane on the Hudson River in 2009 afterÂ a bird strike destroyed both engines. Granted, two geese caused the rare event,Â but birdÂ strikes are a real problem. Problems with drones will increase if peopleÂ are not incentivized to fly responsibly, and the FAA regulation is a start. Granted, it does seem ridiculous that little 8-year-oldÂ Timmyâs Christmas present cannot be flownÂ until itâs been registered with the FAA,Â but drones can indeed cause problems for others. Little Timmy will likely loseÂ his drone over the rooftops or get it enmeshed in his sisterâs hair. Some dronesÂ cost as much as a laptop or tablet. Imagine your tablet flying out of sight andÂ beyond the signal of your controller. According to the NewÂ York Times, over 8,000 lost drones were reported lost last ChristmasÂ just onÂ Nextdoor,Â a popularÂ app for communicating directly with one's neighborhood. Perhaps it's best to leave drones over $20 or 8 ounces to the professionals.

November - 2017

TPCAST Joins Forces with VRstudios to Provide Wireless VR Solutions to the Location Based Entertainment Industry
November 01, 2017 09:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time
BELLEVUE, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--VRstudios, the leading provider of award-winning VR solutions for Location-Based Entertainment (LBE), announced today, a partnership with TPCAST Technologies headquartered in Beijing. VRstudios will become the first commercial distribution partner of TPCAST in the United States, and will be deploying TPCASTâs wireless technology in a new VRcadeÂ® product line to be announced soon. VRstudios currently has deployed 50 systems of its next generation VRcade products in 14 countries around the globe. The partnership with TPCAST will provide VRstudios with technology that will be utilized for a new product concept that will complement the companyâs existing VRcade Zoneâ¢ and VRcade Arenaâ¢ systems.
âVRstudios was the first company in the world to provide totally wireless, full-motion capability to virtual realityâ
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âVRstudios was the first company in the world to provide totally wireless, full-motion capability to virtual reality,â said Kevin Vitale, VRstudiosâ CEO. âBy partnering with TPCAST we can provide an even more comprehensive product line of high performance attractions to address the requirements of LBE facilities around the globe. This exemplifies the benefits of our Attraction Management Platformâ¢ that has been designed to allow easy integration of the best emerging technologies in the VR industry.â
âWe are excited to partner with VRstudios, the leader in delivering immersive VR attractions to the commercial LBE market, and enable them to expand the LBE industry and create a pivotal change in the future of wireless, full-motion, arena-scale VR,â said Udi Yuhjtman, TPCASTâs North America GM. âTPCAST is committed to the VR market by supporting untethered high-end systems providing a fully immersive experience with enhanced video and audio quality.â
VRstudios is very pleased to be adding TPCAST into the âVRstudios Partner Showcaseâ program along with several major technology and game industry companies to be announced in the coming months. TPCAST is the first company to introduce a commercial Wireless Adapter for Virtual Reality, which preserves video quality and application performance. Launched on November 11th, 2016, TPCAST created the worldâs first commercial wireless VR adapter for HTC VIVE. In October 2017, TPCAST announced that it is working on a wireless adapter for the Oculus Rift headset.
VRstudios recently announced its Attraction Management Platform (AMP), the VRcade Arenaâ¢, an 8-player, free roaming, warehouse-scale system, and Terminal 17â¢, a high action multi-player arena game, as the latest additions to its product line. AMP as well as a half-sized VRcade Arena will be demonstrated for the first time publicly at the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) Expo in Orlando, Florida, November 14-17.
About VRstudios:
VRstudios is the VR industryâs premier global provider of Location-Based Entertainment (LBE) solutions. VRstudios makes it easy for owners and operators of theme parks, family entertainment centers, cinemas and casinos to offer innovative virtual reality attractions to their guests. VRstudiosâ Attraction Management Platform (AMP) enables quick installation and efficient operation of VR attractions. VRstudios launched in 2014 as the first company to offer out-of-home fully immersive VR with free-roaming, wireless and untethered, multi-player capabilities.
About TPCAST:
Creator of the first commercial wireless virtual reality solution, TPCASTâs vision is to unleash the VR world by making all VR/AR/MR head-mounted displays wireless. The companyâs patented technologies enable highly efficient bi-directional communications between the PC and a VR HMD with near-zero latency. TPCASTâs mission is to work with the VR Industry and key VR technology providers to deliver the best wireless VR experience to consumers and enterprises.[company]

June - 2017

Intel is collaborating with AT&T and Ericsson on a second trial using millimeter wave (mmWave) technology to deliver an ultra-fast 5G network experience to more locations in Austin, Texas. Announced today by AT&T, this trial allows participating residential, small-business and enterprise customers to stream premium live TV via AT&Tâs DIRECTV NOW service and experience faster broadband services over a fixed wireless 5G network.
The IntelÂ® 5G Mobile Trial Platform, designed for faster integration and testing of 5G devices and wireless access points, is being used in this trial along with Ericssonâs 5G radio access network.
âThis trial, part of our long-term collaboration with AT&T, builds on the success of our first 5G Austin trial and provides business and consumer participants a chance to experience the type of services and market opportunities they can expect in their daily lives with enhanced mobile broadband, ultra-fast speeds and reliable network capabilities,â said Sandra Rivera, senior vice president and general manager of Intelâs Network Platforms Group and 5G executive sponsor. âIntel, AT&T and Ericssonâs work together trialing early usages of 5G technologies and the experiences it will bring to businesses, demonstrates the importance of industry collaborations and the need for seamless flow of data across the network, cloud and devices to make 5G a reality.â
This announcement is part of Intelâs ongoing work with industry leaders â from networking to wireless communications â to define standards and deliver products that will make 5G a reality.

AirFuelâ¢Resonant wireless charging technology has been a long time coming, but itâs recently been released for commercial use. AirFuel Resonant is not the wireless charging that we have had for the past few years; the majority of wireless charging units to now use inductive technology to charge devices.

[caption id="attachment_132" align="alignleft" width="643" caption=" Magnetic resonance charging. Application example: A transmitter is under a table powered with house current and covers a wide area. The receiver is in the smartphone. (Source: Witricity)"][/caption]

AirFuel Resonant offers:

Spatial freedom; it does not require a specific position in a cradle or on a mat.

Charging from inches away, even through furniture, backpacks, and back pockets.

If you are at all familiar with wireless charging technology, you might be wondering where AirFuel originated. The AirFuel Alliance is a merged alliance of wireless technology represented by the Power
Matters Alliance (PMA) and the Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP), each of which had their own wireless charging technology. See Table 1 for information regarding the technologiesâ former names.

The Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) owns the Qi standard for inductive wireless charging and has been out for some time, as the standard was released in 2009. AirFuel Allianceâs president and chairman Ron Resnick claims that there are already over 4,000 resonant-based public charging spots worldwide. The technology allows so-called âambient chargingâ through backpacks, purses and pockets in surrounding infrastructure for AirFuel Resonant-enabled phones.

The market leader in wireless charging might be Qi for the moment, even though Samsung has hedged its bets by including both Qi and AirFuel inductive wireless charging in their latest phones. The devices that power the chargers include transmitters and receivers from Texas Instruments that are Qi-compliant and Nordic Semiconductor provides transmitters and receivers for both AirFuel
Inductive and Resonant wireless charging. The new Dell Latitude 7285, a tablet-laptop hybrid can charge wirelessly from an AirFuel Resonant mat from WiTricity. Nordic will unveil its AirFuel Resonant SoC, the nRF52832, used to implement an AirFuel Power Receive Unit (PRU) at CES ASIA June 7 â 9, 2017. Last year, CES Asia had over 33,000 attendees.

January - 2017

UC Berkeleyâs Dr. Rabaey sees humans becoming an extension of the wearable IoT via neuron connectivity at recent IEEE IMS event.
by Hamilton Carter and John Blyler, Editors, JB Systems
During the third week in May, more than 3000 microwave engineers from across the globe descended upon San Francisco for the International Microwave Symposium 2016. To close the week, it seemed only fitting then that the final plenary talk by Jan Rabaey was titled âThe Human Intranet- Where Swarms and Humans Meet.â
Dr. Rabaey, Professor and EE Division Chair at UC Berkeley,Â took the stage wearing a black T-shirt, a pair of slacks, and a sports coat that shimmered under the bright stage lights. He briefly summarized the topic of his talk, as well as his research goal: turning humans themselves into the next extension of the IoT. Ultimately he hopes to be able to create human-machine interfaces that could ideally not only read individual neurons, but write them as well.
What Makes a Wearable Wearable?
The talk opened with a brief discourse on the inability thus far of wearables to capture the publicâs imagination. Dr. Rabaey cited several key problems facing the technology: battery life; how wearable a device actually is; limited functionality; inability to hold user interest; and perhaps most importantly something he termed stove-piping. Wearable technologies today are built to communicate only with other devices manufactured by the same company. Dr. Rabaey called for an open wearables platform to enable the industry to expand at an increasing rate.
Departing from wearables to discuss an internet technology that almost everyone does use, Dr. Rabaey focused for a few moments on the smart phone. He emphasized that while the devices are useful, the bandwidth of the communications channel between the device, and its human owner is debilitatingly narrow. His proposal for remedying this issue is not to further enhance the smart phone, but instead to enhance the human user!
One way to enhance the bandwidth between device and user is simply to provide more input channels. Rabaey discussed one project, already in the works, that utilizes Braille-like technology to turn skin into a tactile interface, and another project for the visually-impaired that aims to transmit visual images to the brain over aural channels via sonification.
Human limbs as prosthetics
As another powerful example of what has already been achieved in human extensibility, Dr. Rabaey, showed a video produced by the scientific journal âNatureâ portraying research that has enabled quadriplegic Ian Burkhart to regain control of the muscles in his arms and hands. The video showed Mr. Burkhart playing Guitar Hero, and gripping other objects with his own hands; hands that he lost the use of five years ago. The system that enables his motor control utilizes a sensor to scan the neurons firing in his brain as researchers show him images of a hand closing around various objects. After a period of training and offline data analysis, a bank of computers learns to associate his neural patterns with his desire to close his hand. Finally, sensing the motions he would like to make, the computers fire electro-constricting arm bands that cause the correct muscles in his arm to flex and close his hand around an object. (See video: "The nerve bypass: how to move a paralysed hand")
Human Enhancements Inside and Out
Rabaey divides human-enhancing tech into two categories, extrospective, applications, like those described above, that interface the enhanced human to the outside world, and introspective applications that look inwards to provide more information about enhanced humans themselves. Turning his focus to introspective applications, Rabaey presented several examples of existing bio-sensor technology including printed blood oximetry sensors, wound healing bandages, and thin-film EEGs. He then described the technology that will enable his vision of the human intranet: neural dust.
The Human Intranet
In 1997, Kris Pister outlined his vision for something called smart dust, one cubic millimeter devices that contained sensors, a processor, and networked communications. Pisterâs vision was recently realized by the Michigan Micro Mote research team. Rabaeyâs, proposed neural dust would take this technology a step further providing smart dust systems that measure a mere 10 to 100 microns on a side. At these dimensions, the devices could travel within the human blood stream. Dr. Rabaey described his proposed human intranet as consisting of a network fabric of neural dust particles that communicate with one or more wearable network hubs. The headband/bracelet/necklace-borne hub devices would handle the more heavy-duty communication, and processing tasks of the system, while the neural dust would provide real-time data measured on-site from within the body. The key challenge to enabling neural dust at this point lies in determining a communications channel that can deliver the data from inside the human body at real-time speeds while consuming very little power, (think picowatts).
Caution for the future
In closing, Dr. Jan implored the audience, that in all human/computer interface devices, security must be considered at the onset, and throughout the development cycle. He pointed out that internal defibrillators with wireless controls can be hacked, and therefore, could be used to kill a human who uses one. While this fortunately has never occurred, he emphasized that since the possibility exists it is key to encrypt every packet of information related to the human body. While encryption might be power-hungry in software, he stated that encryption algorithms build into ASICs could be performed at a fraction of the power cost. As for passwords, there are any number of unique biometric indicators that can be used. Among these are voice, and heart-rate. The danger for these bio-metrics, however, is that once they can be cloned, or imitated, the hacker has access to a treasure-trove of information, and possibly control. Perhaps the most promising biometric at present is a scan of neurons via EEG or other technology so that as the user thinks of a new password, the machine interface can pick it up instantly, and incorporates it into new transmissions.
Wrapping up his exciting vision of a bright cybernetic future, Rabaey grounded the audience with a quote made by Joanna Zylinska, an Australian performance artist, in a 2002 interview:
âThe body has always been a prosthetic body. Ever since we developed as humanoids and developed bipedal locomotion, two limbs became manipulators. We have become creatures that construct tools, artifacts, and machines. Weâve always been augmented by our instruments, our technologies. Technology is what constructs our humanity. â¦, so to consider technology as a kind of alien other that happens upon us at the end of the millennium is rather simplistic.â
The more things change, the more they stay the same.

June - 2016

Typically, there are three phases in custom design flows where time to final layout has been a bottleneck: area estimation, layout / simulation cycle and final layout. Pulsic, a provider of physical design tools for precision design automation, will demonstrate solutions to overcome those bottlenecks at DAC 2016: Pulsic Animateâ¢ and Pulsic Unityâ¢ Chip Planner.
Pulsic Animate surpasses traditional approaches to automating transistor-level IC design, which have attempted to improve on portions of the design flow, but have not managed to generate near âmanual-qualityâ layout without significant user intervention. Animate is the first complete automated layout system built from the ground up for transistor-level analog and custom-digital design. Animate overcomes layout bottlenecks by delivering an easy-to-use flow that reads in a schematic, automatically extracts design constraints, and employs patent-pending, multi-threaded PolyMorphicâ¢ technologies to very quickly produce abstracted âBlueprintâ representations of the designs. Many different âBlueprintsâ are generated in minutes or seconds. These layout âBlueprintsâ are guaranteed to contain no opens or shorts and can therefore be extracted to produce accurate parasitics that can be fed back into simulation. Animateâs constraint recognition capability automatically generates constraints based on netlist topology analysis, eliminating the need for manual constraint entry and management.
Layout âBlueprintsâ can be saved to an OpenAccess database and modified by the user to produce high-quality, fully placed and routed, detailed layouts in a fraction of the time taken using a traditional approach.
For more detailed information on Pulsicâs automated analog layout solution, see Â http://www.pulsic.com/Animate/ For an exclusion demonstration of Pulsicâs Animate while at DAC, click here.
âFor too long now, manual layout has persisted in analog design because previous efforts at automation could not approach the level of quality offered by manual designers,â said Mark Williams, co-founder and CEO, Pulsic. âAnimate provides value in multiple areas across the design flow. Since the introduction of Animate last year, we have been receiving accolades from both circuit designers and layout engineers who are able to do accurate simulations early in the design process and to get to faster layout closure with high quality of results.â
Pulsic Unity Chip Planner is the first and only hierarchical, top-down and bottom-up floorplanner built for cell-level custom design. Although automated floorplanners are a part of standard digital design flows, they do not address all the needs of custom designers. Custom designers face unique challenges, such as large hard-IP blocks, analog content, and few metal layers available for routing. At leading-edge nodes (28 nm and below), process rules constrain designs in new ways, and the extreme aspect ratios of the routed wires and highly resistive metals make understanding parasitics critical.
Unity Chip Planner enables custom design teams to manage growing complexity while accelerating design closure and improving design quality. By providing a high level of automation, Unity Chip Planner gives accurate results quickly and enables custom design teams to respond to netlist changes quickly and easily. In addition, Unity Chip Planner can produce early estimated parasitic extraction data from an unrouted -- or partially routed -- floorplan, allowing multiple architectures to be explored and validated without time-consuming detailed implementation of the layout.
Unity Chip Planner provides all the necessary tools and technologies within a fully integrated floorplanning environment. The guided flow offered in Unity Chip Planner helps ensure faster design closure with successful results every time. For more detailed information, please visit: Â http://www.pulsic.com/products/pulsic-planning-solution/unity-chip-planner/ For an exclusion demonstration of Pulsicâs Unity Chip Planner while at DAC, click here.

Aldec, Inc., a pioneer in mixed HDL language simulation and hardware- assisted verification solutions for digital system designs, announced that its verification tools suite, used for over 30 years of complex FPGA design verification, is available for ASIC chip design.
Covering the full digital verification flow from design and test planning through simulation, emulation, and prototyping, Aldecâs popular verification tools help designers in small and large fabless companies ensure that complex digital ASIC designs meet all functional and timing requirements before being committed to a mask set, helping to protect against the high cost of a mask respin.
Aldecâs verification suite includes cost-effective, high-performance tools for HDL verification across the full range of industries, including computing, storage, communications, and the Internet of Things, as well as safety-critical applications within aerospace, medical, automotive, and industrial systems.
âEngineers need a reliable verification partner that suits their budgets while still providing a high level of support,â said Dr. Stanley Hyduke, Aldec Founder and CEO. âTo fill this need, we at Aldec have extended our spectrum of verification tools for use in digital ASIC designs.â
Aldec tools support all phases of the digital flow, from design planning through to prototyping for software verification.

Spec-TRACERâ¢manages requirements/specifications, providing capture, mapping to tests, and full traceability for compliance with critical-systems standards like ISO-26262 for automotive, IEC-61508 for industrial and DO-254 for avionics.

Aldecâs high-performance Riviera-PROâ¢simulatorspeeds verification through both fast incremental compilation and fast multi-core simulation execution. It accepts code written in VHDL, Verilog, SystemVerilog, SystemC, and mixtures of these languages. It supports the latest verification libraries, such as OVM/UVM, along with many specialized graphical UVM debugging tools. It offers code and functional coverage capabilities with coverage analysis tools to support a metric-driven verification approach. It can handle the multi-million-gate designs typical of ASIC projects.

The HES-7â¢board and HES-DVMâ¢software combine to provide a hardware emulatorwith a SCE-MI 2 interface. HES-DVM manages design setup, design compiler integration, and debug instrumentation. It partitions large designs across multiple HES-7 boards and supports several host communication schemes for different emulation modes:

PLI/VHPI for bit-level acceleration

SCE-MI 2 and DPI-C for function-based transaction-level and UVM verification

SCE-MI 2 and TLM for macro-based hybrid emulation with a virtual platform running processor models or a SystemC testbench